Month: February 2018

At a recent all-night prayer vigil, nearly 100 Roman Catholics gathered in a church ground floor chapel to pray the rosary in Cantonese for their fellow worshippers in mainland China.

On their minds as they recited the prayer: a possible deal between the Holy See and China’s communist leaders that is worrying many Catholics.

Lucia Kwok, a care worker stepped out of the chapel and spoke of her dismay over the recent news. Pope Francis, she said, was making deals with the government in China. “We don’t trust the PRC because they are dishonest. They lie, they do bad things and never keep their promises,” Kwok said. “China is not worth our trust.”

Many Catholics in Hong Kong are confused and upset with the Vatican’s recent steps to resume relations with the Chinese government even as Beijing has continued to silence critics.

In the nearly seven decades since its establishment, the People’s Republic of China has not had formal diplomatic relations with the Holy See, a condition rooted in the Vatican’s tradition of appointing its bishops worldwide — a practice the mainland Chinese leadership has historically viewed as interference in its internal affairs.

Patriotic Catholic Association

China’s Catholics have been allowed to practice their religion under a government-supervised entity known as the Patriotic Catholic Association in which the government officially names bishops. Some — but not all — of those bishops have been quietly approved by the Vatican as well.

The Holy See has considered sacraments administered in the patriotic church valid, but the existence of the entity and the government’s tight control of it has for decades has prompted many observant Catholics to practice their faith in a parallel, “underground” Catholic church, whose members see themselves as true followers of the church in Rome. The underground church is declared illegal and its members have been routinely subjected to arrest and ruthless persecution.

Critics say an agreement between the Holy See and the Chinese government would allow the Vatican to operate more openly in China, but grant greater control to Beijing over the church’s decisions.

Zen expresses frustration

At the prayer gathering in Hong Kong, Kwok’s frustration was echoed by Cardinal Joseph Zen, the retired bishop of Hong Kong and a longtime critic of Beijing, who prayed quietly with the group. In recent weeks he has termed any agreement between the Vatican and Beijing that would allow China control over the church as “evil.”

News reports have said the agreement would legitimize the government-appointed bishops and force those in the underground church to retire. The reports say the pope in Rome would have a final say over the approval of bishops, but Zen has voiced concern that Beijing would only name bishops loyal to the communist leadership.

“It’s something important for the whole church, this attitude of fidelity and disrespect for our faith. The faith and the discipline. It’s a very serious matter to disregard centuries of doctrine,” Zen said. “They want everybody to come into the open and obey the government. They never say how they would deal with bishops in the underground. It’s obvious what they are going to do… They will not only eliminate bishops, but in some dioceses have no bishop, but some kind of [government] delegate.”

The Vatican has asked Catholics for time to work out details. Pope Francis, speaking to reporters in early December, said: “It’s mostly political dialogue for the Chinese Church… which must go step by step delicately,” he said. “Patience is needed.”

Changing political landscape 

Several Catholics in Hong Kong have said the move can be seen as an appeasement, coming at a fraught moment when China has grown more authoritarian under President Xi Jinping.

On Sunday, China’s ruling party announced it would end presidential term limits, an extraordinary move by a government that sought to avoid the dangerous one-man control exerted by former leader Mao Zedong. The move will, in effect, allow Xi to serve for life. During his five years in office, Xi’s policies have attacked economic corruption as well as curtailed the work of human rights attorneys, labor organizers, investigative journalists and bloggers.

In December, the Vatican asked two bishops in the underground church in China to relinquish their roles to men approved by the government. Vatican envoys asked Bishop Zhuang Jianjian of Shantou to step down and cede control to Huang Bingzhang, an excommunicated bishop and a member of China’s acquiescent legislature, the National People’s Congress, according to asianews.it.

Guo Xijin, another underground bishop in Fujian province, was asked to serve as an assistant to Zhan Silu, another government appointed bishop. Previously, the Vatican had said that both men had been elevated illegally by the government.

Opponents see it as an unusual intrusion, even violation, of the church’s authority. They are also concerned about signs that the government has restricted religious practice, such as orders that followers not bring children to worship.

News of the Vatican’s negotiations prompted several professors to start a petition against any agreement that would cede control to Beijing. More than 2,000 people have signed.

“We think the Catholic Church has appeal [for] the Chinese people exactly because it has refused to compromise with the Chinese authority,” said Joseph Cheng Yu-shek, a retired political science professor in Hong Kong, and one of the petitions organizers. “The first Christians of China were the very, very poor peasants in the cultural revolution days. My argument is if the Vatican makes a compromise with Beijing, the Catholic church loses that moral and spiritual appeal. And it doesn’t benefit the church.”
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A month ahead of presidential elections, thousands of Russians rallied in the capital city of Moscow Sunday in honor of Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov, who was murdered on this day three years ago.

In a rare sanctioned opposition gathering in Russia’s capital, many carried flags, portraits of Nemtsov, placards and flowers in frigid temperatures as low as minus 14 degrees Celsius.

Moscow police, who are often accused of underestimating opposition crowd sizes, said that 4,500 people attended the rally. Pro-opposition monitors said the figure was over 7,000.

Former presidential candidate Alexey Navalny, an anti-corruption campaigner who has been blocked from participating in the elections over legal problems widely seen as manufactured to keep him out of the race, was reported to have been in attendance.

Nemtsov, one of Russian president Putin’s most vocal critics, was shot in the back late at night while walking across a bridge just meters from the Kremlin in 2015. He was working on a report examining Russia’s role in the conflict in Ukraine at the time of his death.

Last year, a Russian court sentenced Saur Dadayev to 20 years in prison and four accomplices between 11 and 19 years. Dadayev initially pleaded guilty, but later recanted, saying he was tortured into the confession.

While the verdicts were welcomed by supporters of Nemtsov, the investigation and trial were condemned for failing to uncover the masterminds of the killing or addressing the motive, which is widely believed to be political.
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Concerned about a “war by blunder,” Sam Nunn, the former U.S. senator from Georgia who chaired the Senate Armed Services Committee, says he favors “tightening the screws in sanctions” on North Korea, but the U.S. needs to communicate with the country at the same time. In an interview with VOA Contributor Greta Van Susteren, Nunn favors modernizing the U.S. nuclear arsenal, as set forth by the Trump Administration’s Nuclear Posture Review. But Nunn, co-chairman of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, questions the need for developing more low-yield nuclear weapons. Interview was conducted February 20, 2018.

Van Susteren: Senator nice to see you, sir.

Nunn: Good to see you, Greta.

Van Susteren: Senator I want to go back to the Nuclear Threat Initiative and how you began, got involved in this, but I want to go back to 1991 what happened with the fall of the Soviet Union, when the Soviet Union was falling, tell me what you did?

Nunn: Well I was chair of the Armed Services Committee, and Senator Luger was a big player on the [Senate] Foreign Relations Committee and I’m in Budapest, Hungary at a conference with Soviet Union representatives, European representatives. Gorbachev gets taken captive. For three days we wait to see what happens. He gets released, one of our Russian friends who had been at the conference calls me, says: “Come to Moscow, big things are happening.” I went to Moscow, I stayed about four days. I visited with Gorbechev. I watched the debate about the break-up of the Soviet Union. I visited with the “new military leaders” who were loyal to [Boris] Yeltsin and I said to myself on the way back: “This place is coming apart and it’s coming apart with thousands of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons materials and we’ve got to do something about it.” That led to the introduction of what became the Nunn-Luger bill. It passed in late 1991 after a very rough start but three or four months later the House and the Senate went along with it and it became known as Cooperative Threat Reduction, helping the former Soviet Union, not just Russia but the other countries that had nuclear weapons and there were four of them — not just Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan and they were very big arsenals and we helped all of them over the next ten, fifteen years to try to secure their nuclear weapons and materials. Try to prevent catastrophic terrorism and also to try to give some meaningful role in life to people who weren’t being paid very well — the scientists — that knew how to make a nuclear weapon — that did not know how to support their families.

Van Susteren: Since that point when the Soviet Union fell and the legislature was passed to help contain or help secure nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, has the threat increased or receded?

Nunn: I think the threat of a deliberate all-out war with a major party like Russia — deliberate, I’ll put the emphasis on that  — has receded. I think the chances of a war by blunder, or a war because of cyber interference with command and control; a war because the United States and Russia escalate in some region like the Middle East or Ukraine; I think that kind of danger has gone up. And certainly the danger of catastrophic terrorism because the know how — the ability to make a crude nuclear weapon, not necessarily one that could be put up on a missile and fly through space but a crude nuclear weapon that could be put in the back of a truck or in a ship in a port, I think those dangers have gone up. So — deliberate war in my view, has receded, but war by blunder has increased in terms of risk and danger.

Van Susteren: After 9-11 the 9-11 commission said that al-Qaida wanted to get their hands on a nuclear weapon. Obviously the know-how is, as you said, out there. The materials are out there, materials that are insecure in many nations and you’ve got the added part that terrorists  often times suicide bombers don’t have that survival instinct. Does that increase your worry, does that make you feel that there is more of a danger or am I being an alarmist?

Nunn: I think there is more of a danger. The basic fundamental thing we have to all understand, in Russia and the United States is Russia and the United States — we have together 90 percent of the nuclear materials. When we’re at each other’s throats, so to speak — when we’re in the Middle East or Ukraine or over the elections, where there is cyber interference here, all of those things make the world inherently more dangerous. The United States and Russia have the huge nuclear arsenals and have a huge responsibility. Unless we’re working together the world gets more dangerous. And then you overlay cyber, you overlay terrorism, you overlay the fact that we’ve got four new countries with nuclear weapons and nine nuclear weapons states now. All of those things in my view have driven up the risk and the danger.

Van Susteren: Do we need as many nuclear weapons as we have? Does the United States have a huge arsenal — far more than we need?

Nunn: The key of survivability — the key is reliability and the key is safe and secure. So as long as we have nuclear weapons we have to have them safe, secure, reliable and in my view — as many as possible for survival, meaning they can take a first attack and still be able to retaliate. That’s what deterrence is. That’s what stability means. So the answer is we can reduce nuclear weapons but we have to do it in concert with what’s going on in Russia and what’s going on in China, so we need to work together. And I’ve said a number of times that if you look at all those dangers, particularly catastrophic terrorism and cyber and so forth, the world is in a race between cooperation and catastrophe and right now, cooperation is not running very fast.

Van Susteren: Modernization. I hear that used all the time. Do we need to modernize our nuclear weapon arsenal or is what we have sufficient?

Nunn: No, I think we need to modernize the arsenal and we need to modernize the infrastructure because you’ve got to have safe, secure and reliable weapons as long as they exist. Schultz, George Schultz, Henry Kissinger and Bill Perry and I all believe we need to reduce the amounts* of nuclear weapons, also make a contribution to having them not proliferate — not spread to other nations and ultimately — we would all like to see a world without nuclear weapons but as long as there are nuclear weapons, America has to have a modern, safe and secure infrastructure and delivery system as well as the weapons themselves.

Van Susteren: Trump administration released in early February the Nuclear Posture Review and this is the first one since the Obama Administration released one in early 2010. Do you know how it’s changed at all or what the difference is between the two?

Nunn: Well, the good news is, as you remember, President Trump during the campaign said two or three times that it would probably be ok for Japan and South Korea and Saudi Arabia to have nuclear weapons — well — those of us in this business — so to speak — were horrified at that because the policy of the United States under every president since World War II has been not to have nuclear weapons proliferate to new countries. It just makes all the dangers greater. But the good news is that in this Nuclear Posture Review it is very clear that United States policy has not changed in that regard. We’re still against proliferation and we still are signed up for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which is enormously important. It’s sort of the pillar of stability in arms control. The other good news is the Administration has said they are not going to test. The bad news is that they are not in favor of ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty but at least we’re not going to test. So there are some good developments in here, in the Nuclear Posture Review and there are some things that I think raise very big questions and concerns.

Van Susteren: One of the things that I was reading about was low yield nuclear weapons. And, do we need those? Doesn’t that start sort of an arms race of other nations wanting low-yield nuclear weapons?

Nunn: Well, you don’t want to make nuclear weapons usable. The head of our strategic air command — I’ll call it strategic strike command — that’s old school — Striker Command now — General Hayden — said within the last year in testimony that all nuclear weapons are strategic. There is no such thing as a tactical nuclear weapon. If someone uses a nuclear weapon, the world has changed and the response will probably be strategic. So — I subscribe to that theory and I think a lot of conversation about usability of nuclear weapons — whether it comes from the Russian side, where they have a sort of a worse vocabulary and “escalate to deescalate” I don’t think there’s any such thing as escalating nuclear weapons to deescalate. General Hayden made it clear that he didn’t think that either, so, this is something that really ought to be debated. We’ve always had lower yield nuclear weapons but the terminology in this nuclear posture review seems to indicate that the United States believes to counter Russia’s “escalate to deescalate” we need to have more usable nuclear weapons and new nuclear weapons. So I think that raises serious questions and I think the burden [of proof] is on those who think we need new weapons for that purpose.

Nunn: And particularly, the concern I have is reference to having a small nuclear weapon on a missile on a submarine. These submarines are our most survivable part of the Triad. If we shoot a small nuclear weapon off a submarine, how in the world is Russia or any other country going to know that it’s not the real biggest nuclear weapon we have. And what would we do if everybody goes to that concept? Do we start having small weapons being shot off submarines with that capacity? I think this is a really dangerous move and I think there are serious questions about to be raised on it. Now, on the other hand, there’s also discussion about a cruise missile, a sea launched cruise missile, to counter the Russian violation of INF, which is of grave concern. And I think that one has room for real discussion. But to take one of our, we call them ‘boomers,’ Trident submarines and put a small warhead on it, and act like the other countries would know it’s a small warhead when it’s being fired, to me raises serious questions. The other factor here would be, do we reveal the location of the submarine?

Van Susteren: When we shoot one off, don’t they know where the location…

Nunn: The trajectory would show where it is

Van Susteren: Would show where it is at that point.

Nunn: I would be shocked if they didn’t lay down as many nuclear warheads as they could in that region, even though the sub would move out because they would fire on the sea. But I think this raises some very big stability concerns and I’m hoping Congress will ask these hard questions because this is serious stuff.

Van Susteren: The way, as a non sophisticated person in nuclear technology, the way I see these low yield nuclear weapons is sort of mini nukes, and I don’t quite understand why we need mini-nukes. I guess it’s because if the Russians lob a mini-nuke, low-yield someplace, we want to respond likewise and not use one of the big nukes and take out, something catastrophic. On the other hand, it creates a whole new arms race maybe to me because other countries would want them as well. Secondly, why don’t conventional weapons, why wouldn’t they serve the purpose, can’t conventional weapons answer a low-yield?

Nunn: Yes, I think all of those are relevant questions and good questions. We also already have low-yield. We’ve had low-yield for a long time. We’ve had a weapon you could carry that is this big that we had, ADMs that you put in holes in the ground and fill the gap. So we’ve had them a long time. He real danger is the psychology and when we start advertising as the United States as a country that’s the strongest military in the world that we need a whole new weapons system and we are thinking about having a weapons that is more usable, now those who are for it will argue that they don’t believe you’ll use a big one. Well, I don’t know whether that’s accurate or not. My view, the US and Russia, if we both start talking about usability and you project that on the other seven nuclear powers in the world or nuclear weapons states, I think the world becomes very very dangerous.

Van Susteren: What’s the situation between the United States and Russia, how much notice do we have of each other using these weapons, because I know you’ve been outspoken about that.

Nunn: Well, the United States and Russia have never had much decision time for the leaders. If there was some kind of warning, the President of the United States and the president of Russia don’t have much decision time. You can debate whether its two minutes or five minutes or seven minutes, but the point is we should both be working to increase decision time.

Van Susteren: And especially since there have been mistakes?

Nunn: Absolutely. False warning and as I mentioned before, cyber-attacks, someone simulates and attack, you’ve got a false warning or it interferes with cyber, non-nation states might interfere with cyber command and control. And so I think the lack of decision time is fundamental and it would be my view the worlds would be a lot safer if we, the United States president and the Russian president and hopefully the other nuclear weapons states will say to their military commanders ‘go off and get in a room with each other and come back and give us more decision time. If we have five minutes now, give us 10 minutes before we have to either use them or lose them and when we get to 10 minutes, go to 20 and then 20 to an hour, to a day to a week and then nuclear weapons become less relevant and guess what? If they become less relevant, then we can begin and decrease the numbers of nuclear weapons. But if we make nuclear weapons more and more relevant, and that’s the big question in this posture review, are we making them more relevant or are we making them, for instance, there’s an implication in the nuclear posture review that’s just come out, that we might respond to a non-nuclear attack with nuclear weapons if it’s a cyberattack, a major cyberattack. Well, this raises questions about attribution. Do we really know where it came from and then we have to ask the question: if the other eight countries do the same thing, now we’ve got nuclear weapons around the world responding to a major cyberattack, how do we know it’s not third parties, how do we know who it is? So we don’t want to go down that route unless we ask some very serious questions and in my view, have discussions with the other nuclear weapons states. Communications in this era is very important because all nuclear weapons states have grave dangers facing them and if we don’t have some rules of the road in the cyber world, if we don’t have rules of the road on decision time, then I really fear for the future of our children and grandchildren.

Van Susteren: It seems more perilous to me listening to you than back in 1991 when you were securing the military weapons the Soviet Union had, when you interject the dangers of cyberterrorism, I mean the world’s gotten profoundly dangerous that way.

Nunn: I think it has, but that was a period of, maximum danger because you had an empire coming apart with thousands of nuclear weapons, tons of chemical weapons and they had scientists and technicians that didn’t know how to feed their families, but they had this knowledge and possession of the weapons, so that was a danger of terrorism, of the weapons leaking. The long pole in the tent for any terrorist who wants to blow up a crude weapon, a nuclear weapon, is getting the nuclear materials. And at that stage, nuclear material was much looser and less protected than they are now. The good news is that we are the world is doing a much better job of protecting nuclear materials. We’ve got a long way to go but progress has been made on that front under both Republican and Democratic presidents.

Van Susteren: Alright, we’ve had situations like AQ Khan in Pakistan essentially being the Walmart of nuclear technology and peddling that to different places, but North Korea is getting it from someplace. Where is North Korea getting its nuclear material?

Nunn: Well, I would assume that would come from multiple sources. Perhaps back in the old days, China, perhaps Russia, perhaps Pakistan, you know the arms bazaar that came out of Khan in Pakistan, so various sources I’m sure/ But North Korea is a ticking time bomb. And the danger in North Korea is not only North Korea itself, but what happens in terms of the temptation of South Korea or Japan or other countries in the region having their own nuclear weapons and that’s the nightmare. The more nuclear countries you have, the greater the danger.

Van Susteren: It seems that we’ve had 70 years with the Russia and US having nuclear weapons, give or take, and we’ve had no nuclear incidents, with some near misses in that there’s been a false alarm but nothing happened. North Korea, we don’t have that track record and we have a threatening president of North Korea who’s tested nuclear weapon, he’s tested an ICBM, and we don’t have that relationship that we had, that you had back then with the Soviet Union.

Nunn: We did talk to the Soviet Union during the days of great tension, we always had communications with them.

Van Susteren: So what about this with North Korea?

Nunn: I think we need carrots and sticks with North Korea. I’m in favor of tightening the screws on sanctions but also think we need to communicate with North Korea. We don’t want nor should any country want a war by blunder. We can’t have that. It’s a mistake because the atmosphere is so poisoned, and the rhetoric on both sides, which has calmed down recently, because perhaps of the Olympics, makes everything more dangerous it makes mistakes more likely by people out there manning the radar systems that are basically controlling the weapons. So there, the rhetoric is important. Even if you don’t agree, I think talking is essential, if for nothing else, to make sure we don’t misinterpret each other and get into a war nobody wants.

Van Susteren: It sure feels dangerous.

Nunn: It is.

Van Susteren: Senator, nice to see you. We miss you in the US Senate.

Nunn: Good to be with you. Thanks.
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Pope Francis is denouncing the “inhuman” violence in Syria and is backing a U.N. Security Council-demanded cease-fire so food and medicine can reach desperate Syrians and the sick and wounded can be evacuated.

Francis led thousands of people in St. Peter’s Square in praying Sunday for an “immediate” end to hostilities.

He said: “The month of February has been one of the most violent in seven years of conflict: hundreds, thousands of civilian victims, children, women and the elderly, hospitals have been hit, people can’t get food. All this is inhuman.”

He insisted: “You can’t fight evil with evil.”

On Saturday, the U.N. Security Council unanimously approved a resolution demanding a 30-day cease-fire across Syria to deliver humanitarian aid to millions and evacuate the critically ill and wounded.
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Italy has had 64 governments since the World War II and many more prime ministers, but even by its own chaotic standards the country is mired in one of the most divisive and increasingly violent parliamentary elections in recent years.

Rising political violence has prompted comparisons to the 1970s and early 1980s  — the “Years of Lead,” as they were known — when the country was engulfed in political and social turmoil and buffeted by domestic terrorism launched by extremists on the right and left of the political spectrum.

Twenty-one parties — and two highly unstable electoral alliances with shifting allegiances and sharp personal animosities, also darkened by intrigue worthy of the Borgia era — are competing in a race that has become shriller and more menacing with each passing day.

Tribal mood prevails

Politicians haven’t restrained their political rhetoric, hurling accusations with abandon at their rivals, smarting their characters and alleging treachery. The political language matches the grim, tribal mood of an electorate in the grip of anti-migrant fervor and furious with a political system seemingly incapable of grappling with key bread-and-butter issues.

Voters have become angrier as the election campaigning has unfolded, as well as more violent. This was demonstrated this week as police in several towns scuffled with bottle-throwing far-left protesters to block them from closing in on provocative anti-migrant and far-right rallies, where speakers call for the mass expulsion of the more than 600,000 migrants who have arrived in the country in the past two years.

On Friday, political violence plunged the center of the coastal city of Pisa into chaos and sent shoppers scurrying as left-wing protesters mounted a violent demonstration against Lega leader Matteo Salvini, who was speaking at a public rally and repeating his pledge to fight Brussels to ensure that “Italians come first.” Protesters threw smoke bombs, stones and bottles at blue-helmeted riot police.

In Turin, six police were hurt Thursday as they battled anti-fascists trying to reach a rally mounted by CasaPound, a neo-fascist grassroots group turned political party. The skirmish was described by local officials as “very serious.” They said the protesters clearly “intended to hurt” the police.

Anti-migrant fever

CasaPound itself has been eager in recent weeks to goad reaction from leftwing adversaries. It has been mounting highly provocative patrols in the multi-ethnic Esquilino neighborhood of Rome. This week group members in the district waved Italian flags and unfurled an anti-migrant banner emblazoned with the words: “Rape, theft, violence, enough degradation in this area.”

“Italians can no longer walk around this area peacefully, because of all the foreigners that continue to arrive end up here,” Carlomanno Adinolfi, a group member told reporters.

On Saturday police imposed a major security clampdown on Rome as political tensions mounted in the final days of the March 4 elections. A Mai piu fascismo (fascism never again) march drew thousands, and beforehand police warned demonstrators from carrying “blunt objects and rigid flag poles” and from wearing helmets and hard hats.

The tone for violence was set earlier this month when a onetime regional candidate for the right-wing populist Lega party, a key group in a right-wing alliance with former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, shot and wounded half-a-dozen migrants in a central Italian town 200 kilometers from Rome.

Street skirmishes between neo-fascists and leftists — as well as racially motivated attacks on migrants — have increased ever since. In the central town of Perugia, a campaigner was reportedly stabbed and wounded midweek while putting up campaign posters for Potere al Popolo (Power to the People), a coalition of communist parties.

Politicians targeted, abducted, beaten

And politicians have been singled out for attack.

Candidates receive death threats on social media. Laura Boldrini, the speaker of the Italian Parliament, who has been a vehement opponent of racism, has received more than most — she also received a bullet in the mail. She is competing for reelection in Milan but is living in a secure house, the whereabouts of which are a closely-guard secret. Effigies of her and the country’s current left-wing prime minister, Paolo Gentiloni, were burned last month by youth members of the Lega in the northern town of Varese.

On Wednesday, a regional leader of Forza Nuova, a stand-alone far-right party that blames migrants themselves for anti-migrant attacks, was abducted in Palermo, Sicily, by leftwing activists wearing balaclavas, who bound and beat him. The activists sent a video of the assault to news stations, accusing their victim, Massimo Ursino, of spreading hate and racism across Italy.

“We tied him up and beat him to show that Palermo is anti-fascist and there is no place for men like him here,’’ they said.

Palermo’s mayor, Leoluca Orlando, said the attack was a sign of the “shameful and disgraceful” state of Italian politics. “We can’t beat fascism with violence. We can’t beat fascism with fascist behavior,” he added. The rise of the far-right has prompted the rise of a new far-left, which appears determined to be muscular.

Homegrown dangers

The day before the Palermo attack, the Italian intelligence services released their annual security report detailing potential hazards to the country. They identified radical Islamic terrorism as the greatest of the security challenges facing Italy, but the agencies also noted that home-grown extremism and the increased presence in Italy of far-right groups, and “fierce Neo-Nazi networks” promulgating racism and intolerance, posed a grave risk, too.

The Italian security services also raised the possibility of cyber-campaigns aimed at influencing public opinion and the country’s political orientation in the run-up to the March 4 election, worrying such campaigns would seek to introduce “destabilizing elements” by exacerbating online Italy’s political, economic and social divisions.

Although Russia wasn’t mentioned by name, U.S. and Italian analysts have warned that European elections have been targets for Russian meddling. But La Stampa newspaper in an investigation has found scant evidence of Russian actors using social media and cyber-attacks to try to shape this election cycle in Italy.

The country’s domestic political actors have proven all too capable of poisoning the political atmosphere without a helping hand from overseas, analysts note.

“Political violence must be stopped,” said Pietro Grasso, leader of Free and Equal (LeU), a leftwing party contesting in the elections. A former anti-mafia prosecutor and Senate speaker, Grasso told a Facebook forum this week, “I condemn violence, from whatever side it comes. It must be condemned and it must be stopped, and we must try to nip in the bud all manifestations of violence linked to political ideology.”

 
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When the first jet airplane lands Monday at Istanbul’s newest airport, it will mark a milestone in what analysts see as a Turkish drive to accomplish with contracting dollars what it has not been able to achieve with traditional diplomacy.

Long frustrated in its bid to join the European Union, analysts say President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has increasingly stressed trade and investment initiatives during his travels to European capitals, making his country second only to China in large-scale construction projects while muting the criticisms of Turkey’s human rights record that have blocked accession to the E.U.

Istanbul’s third airport, when it officially opens in late October, will be able to handle up to 200 million passengers a year, outstripping most other global transport hubs and establishing Turkey as a crucial gateway linking Europe and Asia.

European investment has been key to many of Turkey’s mega-projects, such as the airport and a multi-billion-dollar wind turbine farm announced this week, and Erdogan is aggressively looking for more.

“Our bilateral trade volume with Italy amounted to nearly $20 billion last year,” he declared ahead of a scheduled visit to meet the pope at the Vatican earlier this month. “However, our potential is much higher than that. We aim to increase our bilateral trade volume to $30 billion in 2020.”

Italian companies have benefited from a number of Turkey’s initiatives, winning several lucrative defense and construction contracts including for one of the world’s tallest and widest suspension spans, Istanbul’s Yavuz Sultan Selim Bridge, which was completed in 2016.

The deals have been a boon for European companies during a period of austerity across the continent. Analysts say this point has not been lost on Turkey and that it increasingly sees such partnerships as useful tools in its efforts to quiet criticism over human rights and its military incursion into neighboring Syria.

“Ankara is buying anybody and everybody with these infrastructure projects and everybody is happy with it,” said political scientist Cengiz Aktar.

“The Europeans get what they really want; they want to continue trade with Turkey,” he said. “And to get the juicy infrastructural projects — they are very happy with this. This is why they keep appeasing Turkey. And all these laments about what is happening to the rule of law in Turkey, this is just crocodile tears.”

Competition for those contracts in Europe is fierce, according to analysts.

“These mega projects, construction infrastructure, tunnels etc., are incredibly lucrative,” said political analyst Atilla Yesilada of Global Source Partners.

“The loans taken out by the building consortium are given treasury guarantees,” he said. “The cost is lower than a typical market loan. There is a revenue guarantee in dollar terms, so whether the project is profitable, does not make a difference – the government makes up the difference. It’s like a treasure room, there is no way you can lose money on these.”

Arms deal with Britain

Separately, Britain and Turkey have struck up a deep trade relationship, largely based on weapons sales, with Britain’s BAE developing a military stealth jet for the Turkish armed forces. At the same time, London has voiced little criticism of Turkey over that country’s human rights record or military operations in Syria.

On Wednesday, the deputy chair of Turkey’s ruling AK Party, Mehdi Eker, spoke at a meeting in the British parliament and voiced appreciation for Britain’s stance on Turkey’s ongoing military offensive in Syria against a Kurdish militia.

“New realism”

Ankara has already coined the phrase “new realism” to define its diplomatic strategy with European countries. Analysts suggest Turkish foreign policy is increasingly sidelining its relations with the European Union and instead focusing on bilateral relations with individual European countries, shaped by pragmatism.

“Relations seem to be based on the idea, ‘let’s put our problems aside, not dwell on them, agree to disagree or whatever,'” said political columnist Semih Idiz of the Al Monitor website. “But there are practical issues that have to be addressed.”

“For all the bad vibes at the moment, there are construction and strategic arms deals being signed between Turkey and France and Italy,” he said. “And after, the post-Brexit situation will undoubtedly speed up Turkish-British relations, not only because Turkey needs good allies in Europe, but because Britain needs the alternative markets and alternative partners.”

Idiz went on to say there are “a lot of areas for Turkish diplomacy to move in” as he referred Britain’s pending exit from the European Union.

Critics are increasingly citing the adage, “He who pays the piper calls the tune,” in describing Europe’s relations with Turkey. They say as long as Ankara has the money to dish out lucrative and seemingly endless contracts to European companies, then its “new realism” foreign policy with Europe seems set to continue.
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A second Russian athlete has failed a doping test at the Pyeongchang Games, a day before the International Olympic Committee’s executive board is to decide whether to reinstate the country for Sunday’s closing ceremony.

Russian Bobsled Federation president Alexander Zubkov told The Associated Press on Friday that a drug-test sample that pilot Nadezhda Sergeeva gave on Sunday was positive.

The Russian delegation at the Pyeongchang Olympics said in a statement that the substance found was trimetazdine, a medication used for angina sufferers that is listed by the World Anti-Doping Agency as a banned substance affecting the metabolism.

“She confirms she took no such medication and the team confirms she was not issued any medication,” said Zubkov, a former bobsledder who himself was stripped of two Olympic gold medals for the Russian doping scheme at the 2014 Sochi Games. “Federation representatives at the Olympics” are starting to prepare a defense, he said.

Zubkov also said a sample she had given five days earlier was negative.

“I can tell you that on the 13th it was clean, but on the 18th it gave a positive result for the heart medication,” he said.

The IOC said later Friday it had been informed of the positive test by the Russian delegation.

Sergeeva’s crew finished 12th in the women’s bobsled competition on Wednesday, after she had given the sample that later came back positive.

The Russian team was barred from the Olympics in December for doping at the Sochi Games, but the IOC invited 168 athletes from the country to compete under the Olympic flag. The IOC set out the criteria for Russia to be reinstated, and the latest doping cases are a setback.

“This won’t win us any extra credit,” Russian delegation leader Stanislav Pozdnyakov said in comments reported by Russian media. “Unfortunately this case speaks to negligence by the athlete. She has let us down.”

A group of influential anti-doping organizations has called on the IOC not to reinstate Russia in time for the closing ceremony.

The Institute of National Anti-Doping Organizations says the IOC “can’t merely ‘wish away’ the most significant fraud in the history of sport,” adding that “by failing to impose a meaningful sanction on the ROC (Russian Olympic Committee), the IOC would be culpable in this effort to defraud clean athletes of the world.”

Earlier this month, Sergeeva told the AP that competitors from other countries had warmed to her after she passed IOC vetting for Pyeongchang, which included an examination of her drug-testing history.

“I don’t know why, but they’ve started talking to us more than ever before. I feel it. Maybe it’s a sign to them that we’re clean,” Sergeeva said. “There’s a lot of people coming up and saying, ‘We’re happy you’re here.’”

At the time, she was training in a T-shirt with the words “I Don’t Do Doping.” Sergeeva used to compete in track and field as a heptathlete before switching sports in 2010.

It is the fourth doping case of the games. Russian curler Alexander Krushelnitsky was stripped of his bronze medal Thursday after testing positive for the banned substance meldonium. Slovenian hockey player Ziga Jeglic and Japanese speedskater Kei Saito also left the games after testing positive.

Trimetazidine, the substance found in Sergeeva’s sample, has been detected in previous doping cases. Chinese swimmer Sun Yang, an Olympic gold medalist, was banned for three months in 2014 by his country’s sports authorities after testing positive for the substance.

Sun said he had been prescribed the drug for a medical condition and hadn’t known it was banned. The perceived leniency of that three-month ban led to Sun receiving criticism from swimmers from other countries at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, where he won another gold medal.

Russia’s bobsled program has been in the spotlight for drug use for several years.

Zubkov and four other bobsledders were disqualified from the 2014 Sochi Games for doping, though four other bobsledders have been reinstated. Another gold medalist, Dmitry Trunenkov, was banned last year for failing a doping test.

 
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The U.S. embassy in the Montenegrin capital of Podgorica has reopened a day after an ex-Yugoslav soldier hurled a hand grenade into the compound and then killed himself with another one.

The embassy said Friday on Twitter it’s “open for business as usual following yesterday’s incident.”

The blast around midnight Wednesday created a crater in the embassy’s yard but injured no one. Police are investigating possible motives and whether the attacker acted alone.

The suspect has been identified as Dalibor Jaukovic, who served in the Yugoslav military during the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia. He was reportedly opposed to Montenegro’s membership in NATO.

Montenegro and Serbia were part of Yugoslavia during the NATO bombing. Montenegro split from Serbia in 2006 and joined NATO last year.

 
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